There are few things in life more aggravating than a broken promise. We feel deeply disappointed, let down, or betrayed when someone promises to do something, then doesn't do it. When someone promises to be somewhere, then doesn't show up.
It's one thing when people try their hardest to fulfill their promises to you, but situations beyond their control prevent them from doing so. It's quite another when they just blow you off, forget, or decide they don't feel like doing what they promised they would do.
It's hard to trust someone who repeatedly breaks promises, someone who doesn't fulfill his or her commitments. We feel disillusioned, sad, or angry when we discover, from first-hand experience, that we can't trust someone because he or she isn't as good as their word.
On the other hand, few things are more satisfying than finding someone you can really trust, someone you can really count on. What a great feeling when people say they'll do something, and you know darn well it'll get done. When they say they'll be there, and you know darn well they'll show up.
One of the over-arching themes in the Torah is the theme of promise and fulfillment. God makes a promise, and God fulfills this promise. In fulfilling the promise, God proves to be trustworthy. One of the key messages communicated in the first five books of the Bible is this: the God of the Israelites is a God people can count on.
The Book of Genesis begins by narrating stories about creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood, and the Tower of Babel. These initial stories address the big picture--creation, the human race, and all its problems.
But then the story shifts gears and narrows its focus onto one family. What follows is a lengthy family saga that unfolds over the course of many generations, with many twists and turns. We follow this saga throughout the rest of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
It's the story about the promise God makes to Abraham, and how God fulfills the promise despite a host of setbacks and a number of obstacles. It's the story about a God people can trust when everything goes wrong and the situation looks hopeless.
About halfway through the Book of Genesis, God makes a promise to Abraham: "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation....I shall make nations out of you, and kings shall spring from you. I shall maintain my covenant with you and your descendents after you, generation after generation, an everlasting covenant...As a possession for all time I shall give you and your descendants the land in which you are now aliens, the whole of Canaan, and I shall be their God."
The promise is threefold: a multitude of descendents, an everlasting covenant with these descendants, and the land of Canaan. In other words, God will turn Abraham's family into a nation, God will be their God for all time, and they shall inhabit a Promised Land.
A lot happens between that moment God makes the promise to Abraham halfway through Genesis, and that moment when Abraham's descendants prepare to enter the Promised Land in the closing chapter of Deuteronomy.
Between the promise and its fulfillment, the Torah narrates a number of lengthy and detailed stories.
Stories about Abraham and Sarah.
Isaac and Rebekah.
Jacob, Leah, Rachel, and their twelve sons.
The sojourn into Egypt.
Pharaoh's enslavement of Abraham's descendents.
Moses, the exodus from Egypt, the wilderness experience, the covenant at Sinai, and the Law.
Throughout the saga, the theme of promise and fulfillment is central not only to the big drama, but to many of the individual stories as well. And many of these individual stories dramatize and intensify the theme of promise and fulfillment by adding a third element: a threat to the promise, an obstacle to its fulfillment.
Time and time again, it looks like situations will prevent God from fulfilling the promise to Abraham. Time and time again, it looks like the story has come to a pre-mature ending with the promise unfulfilled. But time and time again, God overcomes the obstacle and gives the story another breath of life.
Abraham and Sarah's inability to have a child is but one example. Abraham and Sarah are childless. They reach a ripe old age when childbirth is physically impossible. How can God enter into an everlasting covenant with Abraham's descendents if Abraham and Sarah have no children? How will the descendents God promises to Abraham enter the Promised Land if Abraham and Sarah have no children?
From the very first generation, it appears that God's promise will remain unfilled. Abraham will have no descendents. There will be no nation or kings. There will be no Promised Land. God's everlasting covenant will conclude with Abraham, and with his death the story will end.
But then the old woman Sarah hears from the Lord that she will give birth. She laughs. Impossible. And then she gives birth to a son, Isaac.
Abraham now has a descendent. There is still hope that God's promise can be fulfilled. The story inches forward.
These types of little stories within the big story continue throughout the saga.
For many years, Rachel is unable to have a child with Jacob.
Pharaoh enslaves Abraham's descendents in Egypt, and comes within inches of slaughtering them on the shores of the Red Sea. Moses delivers them in the nick of time.
Abraham's descendants rebel against Moses in the wilderness, express their desire to return to Egypt, and turn their backs to God by worshipping an idol.
Constant setbacks and obstacles.
Yet by the time we get to the end of Deuteronomy, there they are--Abraham's descendants, preparing to cross the River Jordan into the Promised Land, a rag-tag horde of people about to become a nation.
Biblical scholars believe Jewish theologians completed the Torah while the Jewish people were living in exile in Babylon, or very soon thereafter. The exile created a tremendous political and spiritual crisis for the Israelites--the most powerful empire in the world had forcibly removed Abraham's descendants from the Promised Land they had entered several hundred years earlier.
Did this mean God had terminated God's eternal covenant with Abraham's descendants?
Did this mean Abraham's descendants would cease to be a nation?
Did this mean Abraham's descendants would disappear once and for all, and that their story had ended?
No, the prophets of Israel said. God was still their God. God's eternal covenant with them was still in place. God would restore them to the Promised Land, where they would one day live in peace and prosperity.
God promises, the prophets said.
The Torah, completed around this time, was a tremendous source of hope for the Israelites because it narrated a story about their ancient past when God had made a promise and then fulfilled it, despite great setbacks and overwhelming obstacles. God demonstrated in the past that God fulfills the promises that God makes. God proved in the past that God is trustworthy.
Therefore, we can trust God now, in our current crises. God will not let us down. God will fulfill God's promise.
One does not have to read the stories in the Torah literally to appreciate the sense of hope they generate. I don't have to believe that God literally intervened in the biological and reproductive systems of an elderly couple to appreciate the message the story communicates. I don't have to believe that Moses literally parted the Red Sea with a staff to appreciate the message the story communicates.
God fulfills God's promise. God is trustworthy. God will not forget you, abandon you, blow you off, or let you down. You can count on God.
This message moves me to reflect on a key faith question: What has God promised us?
What has God promised us? That is a deep question. Answering that question gets to the very heart of our identity as a people. It is one of the most fundamental faith questions we can possibly answer. What has God promised us?
To answer that question is to stake our entire life on something. To believe that God has promised us something, and to believe that God fulfills God's promises, is to live our lives with absolute certainty about something.
Now if you don't believe that God has promised us anything, or that God is not trustworthy, that leads you down a whole different path through life, a path I'm not going to pursue right now. For now, I'll assume that as people of faith, as disciples of Jesus Christ, you do believe that God has promised us something, and that you do believe God fulfills God's promises.
I believe God has promised us something, and I believe God fulfills God's promises. But before I tell you what I believe God has promised us, let me share a few things I don't believe God has promised.
I don't believe God has promised that life will be easy, and that all of our particular hopes and dreams will be realized.
I don't believe God has promised us that our lives will be free of suffering or tragedy.
I don't believe God has promised to intervene in our lives to spare us physical, emotional, or mental pain.
I don't believe God has promised to fix our problems for us, or to clean up our mess.
I don't believe God has promised to feed all our hungry people, to house all our homeless people, to heal all our sick people, to end all our wars, and to make us live in peace with one another.
In short, God has not promised to do what we can do for ourselves
What does God promise us?
I believe God promises us that if we truly follow Jesus Christ with all our heart, mind, soul, spirit, and strength, and if we live our lives within Christ's community, if we invest our lives into the church, then we will never be alone. Christ-like people who love us, care for us, and support us will surround us all the days of our lives.
I believe God promises that when our particular hopes and dreams are shattered, when suffering and tragedy touch our lives, the Christ-like people who surround us with their love, care, and support will bear our suffering with us, bring comfort and healing to our lives, and renew us in some way.
I believe God promises to offer us a spiritual power.
A spiritual power we witness in Jesus Christ.
A power of wisdom.
A power of love.
A power of compassion.
A power of healing.
A power of reconciliation.
A power of renewal.
A power that will transform us.
A power that we can use to solve our own problems and to clean up our own messes.
I believe God promises us that if we learn how to open ourselves to this spiritual power, if we learn how to receive this power, and if we learn how to use this power, then we will be empowered to feed all our people, house all our people, bring healing to the earth, create justice, end our wars, and live in peace.
If we learn to how to open ourselves to this power, receive this power, and use this power, then we will enter the Promised Land.
God does not promise that the trip to the Promised Land will be easy. There will be many setbacks and obstacles. There will be much resistance along the way. Much suffering along the way.
But God does promise us that until we get there, no matter how long it takes, no matter how many setbacks and obstacles, God will be with us.
God will not forget us, abandon us, blow us off, or let us down. We can count on God. God fulfills God's promise.
--Rev. Tom VandeStadt
June 12, 2005
